Read Online By Blood Written by Steven Womack - Free Book Online

for him, had sold him cheaply into a house that was famed for paying little and promoting even less.
    His books had languished first in the warehouses, then on the shelves, and finally on the tables containing stacks of remaindered books that were sold practically by the pound in discount stores and buyers’ clubs. The ones that were still lying around after that were pulped, ground back into mash, and recycled for another writer’s words.
    Not one of them was still in print. Michael Schiftmann’s career as a writer was history. The nominations and prizes, the reviews and the praise meant nothing. Taylor Robinson was experienced enough to know that there was a lot more to publishing success than writing well and producing good books. But never had she seen a writer more ill-treated.
    After reading Michael’s manuscript, Taylor Robinson decided to change that. In The First Letter , the series debut, Michael introduced his protagonist, known only as Chaney.
    In Chaney, Michael had created a protagonist who was the personification of true evil, a man for whom murder became an act of artistic and personal liberation. Yet he was also a charming, intelligent, and erudite man, with a sense of style and taste that couldn’t help but endear him to readers. As Michael was careful to establish from the beginning, Chaney’s victims never exactly deserved their fate, but they weren’t entirely innocent, either. It wasn’t what Taylor could call a new moral code—just as there are no new stories, there are no new moral codes—but the story, in its unusual approach to style and voice, reflected the ethically ambiguous state of the world today.
    More important, the book was a damn good read. Taylor convinced Joan Delaney to let her take him on as a client.
    That night she phoned Michael at his hotel and told him that if he’d have her, she was willing to take him on. And while she couldn’t guarantee him a slot on The List immediately, she could promise him that no matter what, she’d break her back for him if that’s what it took.
    Taylor sold the first book for ten grand, not much in the pantheon of contemporary book deals, but it was a hardcover deal to a publishing house that took its writers seriously and promoted the hell out of them. The First Letter was published just in time to hit the bookstores for Christmas. The first reviews were astounding. The reviewers either loved the book more than anything that had come off the line in years, or they vilified the book so passionately that one couldn’t help but go buy a copy to see what all the hubbub was about. What the reviews didn’t do for the book, word of mouth—that most powerful of all publishing promotional tools—did. The book earned out its advance in a month and was sold to nine foreign publishers, then into a hefty paperback reprint deal that garnered enough to allow Michael to quit his job as a proofreader for good. The second in the series went for seventy-five thousand, the third for a hundred and a quarter. The fourth book sold for two hundred thousand dollars and missed The List by only a couple of slots. She’d gone back to contract for Michael Schiftmann a year and a half ago and gotten him a neat three hundred thousand for The Fifth Letter . By then, momentum alone carried the book onto The List.
    Taylor Robinson had worked herself bleary-eyed for Michael, and she had brought him from a third-rate publisher to the top of the heap. They’d worked closely together, with Taylor bringing all her editorial talent and skills to bear on the books. They had become true partners in a life’s work.
    And now, with this contract, she was set to make him rich.
    So, Taylor Robinson wondered that icy February afternoon in her overheated office, why was she so uneasy?

CHAPTER 6
    Monday afternoon, Nashville
    Master Patrol Officer Debbie Greenwood carefully wheeled her blue-on-white Ford Taurus squad car down the exit ramp off I-40 and onto Charlotte Avenue just a